14 DAY TRIAL // Grand Theft Auto is by all means one of the most successful franchises in the history of videogaming. Estimates say that it has sold about 120 million units since it was initially launched and there is intense speculation about what Rockstar, the developer, plans to do for GTA V.
But the one blemish on its reputation is Chinatown Wars, the game created specifically for the Nintendo DS and was then ported to the PlayStation Portable and then to the Apple iPhone. When it first came out on the DS, the game managed to sell 90,000 in about two weeks.
But Ben Feder, who is the Chief Executive Officer of Take Two, talked to MCV and pointed to the positive performance of Chinatown Wars. He said that “As of February 2010, Chinatown Wars’ unit sales in the U.S. represented nearly 50 percent of the unit sales of all M-rated DS titles in the history of the platform.”
The game was very well received by critics but this failed to actually generate sales, mainly because of the audience profile of those gaming on the Nintendo DS, which tends to shun Mature rated videogames. The Entertainment Software Ratings Board states there are just nine launched titles on the platform with that rating.
Feder also talked about how his company plans to approach handheld gaming in the future, revealing that “Piracy is a real and present danger for our industry and must be addressed, especially in the handheld market. The commercial performance of Chinatown Wars has certainly suffered at the hands of piracy.”
From the statements made by the CEO of Take Two, it's not easy to discern whether the Grand Theft Auto series will return to the DS or to handhelds. Neither publisher nor developer is talking about GTA V but there's a chance we might learn something new at the E3 show.